Us
by CallHerVictor
Summary: Written for VAMB Secret Summer 2014. A quiet one-shot post Coda.


**Written for VAMB Secret Summer 2014 for Katthryn. Much thanks to the ladies who ran the show.**

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**Set during the infamous moonlight sail on Lake George (post-Coda)**

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**"Us"**

"Admit it, you really thought I was serious about that!"

There's laughter in your voice when you say it, a playful drawl of conceit that shifts with the moving water beneath you. The moon throws a pillar of light across the lake, and whatever I think to say in response evaporates.

It doesn't seem fair that you can effect such a change, especially here in the holodeck, where the light is a contrived thing and the air more so. The sway of deck beneath your feet no more than a random oscillation of wave frequencies designed to emulate the rhythm of inlet waters. The sounds of creaking wood and waves lapping against the dock where you to stop and stretch to the night: also fake.

What's real is the way the light bends off your face, the way you arch to meet it, and it to you. Skin like yours was designed for this level of cloudless ambiance, like white wine pairs with white meat. The harsh, unfiltered light of the sun or the recycled glow of sodium deck lighting doesn't do you justice compared to the glow of a handful of stars. Then again, maybe it's all part of the lore behind your genetics. The hallmarks of the _sidhe_ - pale skin, red hair, blue eyes – that makes your wraith-like countenance so painfully enchanting.

"Chakotay?"

Was it the moonlight or the champagne you weren't serious about? Or maybe the way you turned to me after the doors sealed shut, moved past the last bastion of our ship, and engaged the privacy lock before offering some dusky promise that we wouldn't want to be interrupted. I've learned that moments like these are a split-second ahead of your better judgment. Just when I relax into the idea of what you and I would look like here, together, you re-plot the course and break away at warp. Even now, I can see the beginnings of it in your face as you work your way back to me with tender, cautious steps. I don't scare you like I used to, but it's not without fear that you close that gap again, working up to the conversation we're long overdue in having. Still, you'll stop, ten planks away, just beyond the longest reach I can make because you deem _that_ distance safe.

_I almost lost you_, I don't say. Thought, for a while, I had. And the regret of those moments crippled me in a way that will leave me limping in the weeks to come. And now, here I was, thinking you were serious. About all this. Silly me. I'm stepping forward before I can consider the weight of my own body, moving past your careful boundary and into the space where I can smell the quick breath blown out between your lips.

A haunting memory is hiding there. I can still taste it in the back of my throat. For a few, icing moments it was my breath inside your lungs, keeping you alive. So, forgive me, if it still feels like I possess a part of you now. Forgive me for what I am about to take, again.

You don't resist and I'm surprised. Resistance is second nature to you, especially out here. Still, when I run my lips across yours, there's a stiff certainty in your skin, and what was soft seven seconds ago in the glow of the moonlight is hard, unyielding, and cold.

For a second.

It changes. You change. And it takes me a second longer to realize the drawing force pulling me deeper into your mouth is actually your hand against the back of my neck. You waste no time finding the soft insides of my mouth. And I almost laugh because you kiss like you do everything else. With skill.

It's an amalgamation of sensations; sweet and bitter, excited and disciplined, insistent but cautious. So cautious, you determine when it ends. Step back to the boat to release the moorings. Motion for me to join you while I try not to notice the way you're straightening your hair, not smile knowing what has unsettled it. When I offer you a hand you step down to meet me, you accept it but don't let go when the simulated current takes our simulated boat out to the center of the lake, bathed in a pool of simulated light.

What's real is the way our fingers stay intertwined. The way your head comes to rest naturally on my shoulder and my hand smoothes the tickle of hair away from my nose. The contentment that settles over my skin when I realize you've fallen into some soft catatonia listening to the beat of my heart.

What's real is us.


End file.
